In an increasingly security conscious world, protecting access to information and/or to systems from unwanted discovery and/or corruption is a major issue for both consumers and businesses. Many consumer or business systems may be vulnerable to unwanted access when the level of security provided within the system is not sufficient for providing the appropriate protection. In this regard, consumer systems, such as multimedia systems, for example, may require the use of integrated architectures that enable security management mechanisms for defining and administering user rights or privileges in order to provide the necessary protection from unwanted access.
An example of a multimedia system that may be accessed by many different users may be a set-top box where manufacturers, vendors, operators, and/or home users may have an interest in accessing or restricting at least some limited functionality of the system. In some instances, a single device, such as a security processor for example, may be utilized to administer security operations in the multimedia system. The security processor may operate independently of other components in the multimedia system when determining rights or privileges of different users to various features in the multimedia system. For example, vendors may have limited access to some of the functions that may be accessible by the manufacturer. Home users may only have access to a subset of the vendors' access rights. In some instances, secure operations may be managed by specifying, in a single location, secure conditions for each security component supported by the system.
Test modes for modern set-top boxes (STBs) may be protected by a plurality of secure authentication mechanisms. Authentication mechanisms in a STB may be required to authenticate a single user or multiple users. In STB applications such as accessing system buses and interfaces, a user may need to provide specific information to enable the system to confirm its identity. The information may be in the form of passwords or responses by the user to the STB challenges.
One of the common approaches to authenticating a user identity is the use of passwords. For example, the user may provide a password, and the STB may validate the password. If the password is associated with the user, that user's identity may be authenticated. If the password is not associated with the user, the password may be rejected and the authentication may fail.
A common hidden unreadable value may be stored in a chip to generate the password. A secure passing algorithm, for example, an algorithm modified from advanced encryption standard (AES) may be enabled to protect the password from an attacker trying to guess it. The password scheme may be used for preventing unauthorized users to access security sensitive areas of a device, for example, observing and controlling test access ports (TAPs) on a software controlled basis. One of the problems associated with passwords are that they are reusable. If an attacker breaks a password, he may later reuse the password to gain access to other STBs. A set-top box (STB) may not be able to distinguish between an attacker and a legitimate user.
On a typical security system, the number of user modes and security components may be sufficiently large that the size of the security management and/or control information may require large amounts of memory. There may be a significant number of access control entries that may correspond to instances when access rights may not be granted and/or instances when the access rights may be the same for multiple user modes and/or for multiple security components, such as default settings, for example. The addition or removal of user modes or security components may pose various implementation challenges, which may increase hardware and/or software complexity. As software and/or hardware complexity increases, it may become more challenging to manage security operations without introducing security breaches or other concerns.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.